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Invercargill city councillor Nigel Skelt (Image design: Tina Tiller)
Invercargill city councillor Nigel Skelt (Image design: Tina Tiller)

PoliticsMay 1, 2023

Councillor who resigned from top stadium job was warned over alleged harassment

Invercargill city councillor Nigel Skelt (Image design: Tina Tiller)
Invercargill city councillor Nigel Skelt (Image design: Tina Tiller)

Sitting Invercargill councillor Nigel Skelt recently resigned from the city’s stadium after 24 years. As Stewart Sowman-Lund reports, it came just weeks after he was accused of sexual harassment by an 18-year-old former employee.

A current Invercargill city councillor was given a formal warning over alleged sexual harassment of a teenager, just weeks before his decision to step down from a senior job at the city’s stadium. 

Nigel Skelt, 65, resigned as general manager of Stadium Southland in April after 24 years with the venue. An official statement from the ILT Stadium Southland Board said Skelt was retiring “on medical grounds and personal reasons with immediate effect”.

Skelt, who also holds a position on the Invercargill Council, having first been elected in 2019, would not be giving up his seat at the council table.

Documents released to The Spinoff under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act reveal Skelt faced accusations of sexual harassment from an 18-year-old employee at Stadium Southland earlier this year. 

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In a February 17 letter sent to Stadium Southland, the employee said that she was very excited about starting her new job, however “during my [time] working at the stadium there were a number of incidents with Nigel Skelt that made me feel uncomfortable and I believe constitute sexual harassment”. 

It included alleged comments such as Skelt calling her a “bikini and beach type of girl” and suggesting she would be keen to participate in naked jelly wrestling. On another occasion, he told customers that she was “very good” at jelly wrestling. 

The woman claimed that when she was alone with Skelt at the office, he told her a story and, in the process, “walked over and rubbed up against my arm” until she shifted away in her chair. An hour later, Skelt called her into his office and instructed her to sit in his chair while he knelt next to her. The woman wrote that he then showed her a confidential presentation and spoke about tuatara reproducing. She remained in his chair for 40 minutes before returning to her desk.

The Spinoff understands all of these events took place during a single work shift.

These comments and actions left the employee in tears and made her feel unsafe returning to work. She subsequently resigned. 

Further documents show that Invercargill mayor Nobby Clark was made aware of the incidents a couple of days later. In an email dated February 19, he described the issue as a “stadium management issue”, however agreed to look into the allegations himself due to his role as the city council’s representative on the stadium trust. “I take such allegations seriously,” Clark said in the message. On February 21 he told an unidentified person that the former employee had done a “brave thing by standing up” and he wanted to make her aware that she’d be “embraced and safe in the future”.

By February 24, Clark and the stadium’s board chair had devised a compensation package for the ex-employee that included a $3,000 lump sum to cover lost income, four weeks of paid counselling with a qualified counsellor and the potential for re-employment at the stadium or a different position with the Invercargill Licensing Trust. 

Subsequent emails show that the woman did not want to accept the offer of a new job, saying she would not feel comfortable working at the stadium again and nor did she wish to take up a role in hospitality. She was also worried that any new role would simply have been created to “make up for” what had happened, though Clark denied this.

In an email a few days later, Clark pledged to monitor Skelt’s behaviour going forward. “Nigel will be monitored and formally warned – you have my word on that,” he said.

That formal warning came on March 9 in a two-page letter which noted that Skelt’s behaviour was “inappropriate and can not be repeated”. It also said that while Clark believed there was  “an element of ‘he said / she said’”, Skelt had admitted his words were “not appropriate”.

The letter added: “I need to advise that any repeat behaviour could put your employment at risk. As a commitment to [redacted’s] parents, Stadium Board members will monitor the role of Managers at the Stadium, and encourage care in their interface with all staff.”

Skelt was also told that the culture he had created at the stadium had “everyone well connected and supported with a less formal roles and structure focus” but that this brought with it a risk that certain comments from senior managers could “have a different impact on staff”.

The same letter confirmed a settlement that included the cash payment for “pain and suffering” along with counselling and the monitoring of managers to “ensure appropriate behaviour is occurring and any inappropriate behaviour is discouraged”. A confidentiality arrangement was also agreed to, noting that “issues do leak and where that occurs, our collective response will be ‘I can’t comment’.”

Just over a month later, on April 17, it was reported by local media that Skelt had resigned from Stadium Southland. At the time, board chairman Alan Dennis said: “Nigel has contributed significantly to both the venue and the city in his tenure at ILT Stadium Southland. The board would like to thank Nigel for his 24 years of service to the Stadium and wishes him well in his retirement.”

The Spinoff’s request for official information did not return any messages from Skelt himself. However, a council spokesperson noted that all documentation “up to the end of March 2023” had been provided.

Skelt is a second term councillor, first elected in 2019 under former mayor Tim Shadbolt. In last year’s local election, he returned the highest voting numbers for any council candidate, but was overlooked for the deputy mayor’s position in favour of Tom Campbell. In 2018, he was awarded a New Zealand Order of Merit for services to badminton.

Clark told The Spinoff he had “no comments to make” and a call to Skelt went unanswered. 

stewart@thespinoff.co.nz

Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ (Photo: Lawrence Smith/Stuff)
Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ (Photo: Lawrence Smith/Stuff)

PoliticsApril 28, 2023

Why isn’t Desley Simpson the mayor?

Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ (Photo: Lawrence Smith/Stuff)
Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ (Photo: Lawrence Smith/Stuff)

When floods smashed Auckland, deputy mayor Desley Simpson left her boss in the shade. So why has the councillor from the posh end of town never had a crack at the top job?

This story was first published on Stuff.

Desley Simpson wants her photo taken at the Wintergardens glasshouses in the Auckland Domain, because she is really proud of the council’s recent refurbishment of the century-old architectural jewel: on time, on budget, on message.

So here we are, just after 11.30 on a sunny Tuesday morning: Simpson and her chief adviser Edward, and Stuff photographer Lawrence Smith and me.

The Wintergardens look lovely, but Smith isn’t happy. The sunlight’s glary. The glasshouses are infested with visitors who’ll get in shot. Also, Smith has learnt that Simpson, deputy mayor of Auckland and councillor for well-heeled Ōrākei, has a blue Porsche 911 with the plate: “DESLEY”.

Sooo… he can take the gardeny picture Simpson’s hoping for, but if the car’s nearby, could she also pose in front of that?

Simpson takes a small backward step. Yes. She drove, so her car’s here. But her guard is up. She knows what this is all about.

“That’s the story of my life. I’m judged. Because you judge a book by its cover.”

Desley Simpson (Photo: Lawrence Smith/Stuff)

Still, she’s co-operative, re-parking to meet the photographer’s needs. And that’s not totally surprising: throughout her 16-year career in local politics, Simpson has been notably accessible, to media and to the public.

Yet I can’t be the only Aucklander who only fully noticed Desley Simpson and her media chops after the chaos and ill-temper of the Anniversary Weekend floods.

First there was that car crash of a press conference at Helensville Fire Station, where Simpson literally dragged mayor Wayne Brown out the back door to stop him bickering with journalists.

In the following days, Simpson picked up the talking stick Brown had so tetchily cast aside and became, as Newsroom put it, Mayor-by-Default: someone who could communicate calmly and clearly to let the city know Everything Was Probably Going to Be Alright. When Cyclone Gabrielle blew in a fortnight later, Simpson was still in loco parentis.

Which is why I thought it might be interesting to meet her. Despite Simpson’s anxiety about being pigeonholed by a photograph, it was only after reading cuttings that I realised she was extremely wealthy and she likes bright designer clothes. I had no idea what car she drove.

Which isn’t to say that I’m now entirely uninterested in the Porsche. It’s a beautiful thing of gentian blue and stitched leather. As I ride shotgun with Simpson to the council offices for the interview proper, the engine purrs like a lion that might tear your limbs off if it cared to.

Wayne Brown’s office is on the 27th floor. We stop at the 26th, but the view from the deputy’s office is still spectacular: Harbour Bridge to the left; Tamaki Drive to the right; Tīkapa Moana/Hauraki Gulf in between, glinting like a handful of diamonds.

For Desley Simpson, politics runs in the family. Sir Henry Brett, a many-greats-uncle, was mayor of Auckland in 1878. Her mother’s adoptive father Sir James Donald was a government minister and later chaired the Auckland Harbour Board. Each time Simpson’s been sworn in she’s worn Sir James’ fob chain “because my mother got it made into a bracelet.”

Music’s also in the blood. Simpson’s mother Leonie Lawson, still going strong at 92, was head of music at Diocesan School for Girls. Simpson herself is an accomplished musician who plays pipe organ, piano, cello and flute.

Growing up in Remuera, Simpson had “a very happy childhood”.

“We had a big back yard and could climb trees. We had a holiday place on the Coromandel. I had a younger brother, and great parents.”

When I ask what year she was born, Simpson declines to say.

She’s also slightly resistant when I ask for a walk-through of her pre-politics CV, because it seems “not exactly relevant to my job”, But she gives a few snapshots: she studied science and psychology. She was general manager of the Yamaha Music Foundation. She was involved in the Graeme Dingle Foundation and co-founded Kiwi Can, a values-based schools programme that focuses on “how to express yourself when you are angry or sad”.

She had two children – both now in their mid-30s – with Scott Simpson, who is the National MP for Coromandel. Her second husband, Peter Goodfellow (of the richlister Goodfellow family), was National Party president from 2009 to 2022.

Simpson with husband Peter Goodfellow, at the Halberg Awards in February. (Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Simpson herself didn’t get around to politics until 2007. Her father had recently died, her marriage had ended. People had been urging her for years, but now it felt like time, so she stood, “and the rest, as they say, is history!”

That history in full: Hobson Community Board 2007; Ōrākei Local Board 2010 then 2013; Auckland councillor for the Ōrākei ward 2016 then 2019 (including appointment by mayor Phil Goff as chair of the powerful Finance and Performance Committee). Then, after her re-election as councillor last year, the new guy, Wayne Brown, made her deputy mayor.

She says she’s proud of big projects such as raising sections of Tamaki Drive (“when all these floods came along, that road was driveable”) or the walking-cycling shared path through Pourewa Valley. Also the way she proved herself in the finance roles under Goff, even though he was far to her political left.

But 16 years of newspaper cuttings show she’s also really into the small stuff: traffic lights, zebra crossing and cycle-lanes; the provision of berm-mowing; the fate of a dog running into traffic near Kohimarama beach. In local paper snaps Simpson admires a worm farm, celebrates some new astroturf, poses near a twinkly-lit tree.

Does she ever grow tired of this stuff?

“No! I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it. I could be a lady who lunches a lot and having a great life, you know, but I think I am having a great life. I’m living the life I want to live.”

Simpson in 2013, with kindergarten manager Karen Affleck, celebrating the arrival of some new artificial turf on a field in Ōrākei (Photo: Jason Oxenham/Stuff)

Simpson is on the political right, traditional home of climate denialism, but says that’s not her. Obviously climate change was behind the big flood, “and we’re not going to have to wait another hundred years for the next one”. Assuming she thinks otherwise would be “judging a book by its cover”.

Likewise around issues of colonisation. She remembers a time when “my father wanted me to leave a school that taught Māori”, but there’s been a generational shift, and now it’s impossible for her to represent Ōrākei “without knowing that a big part of it is Takaparawhā/Bastion Point and the marae and Ngāti Whātua”.

The people of Ōrākei voted her in, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about other parts of the city.

Efeso Collins, the Manukau ward councillor who lost out to Brown in the mayoral race, has often said he would deliberately sit next to Simpson in council, so Auckland’s richest and poorest wards could learn from each other.

Yep, says Simpson, she and Collins would sit together and the exchange of ideas worked “both ways”.

“But again, don’t judge a book by its cover. I spent a lot of time in South Auckland with the Kiwi Can programme. I was in pretty much every school in Manurewa, a lot of schools in Māngere.”

She says she’ll never know South Auckland like someone who grew up there, but that’s why there are 20 councillors around the table: “It’s about the diversity of Auckland.”

Desley Simpson in late 2022 with then fellow Auckland councillor Efeso Collins. Both say they learnt a lot from each other about each other’s wards. (Photo: David White/Stuff)

On the weekend of the floods, Simpson was just home from abroad. She was hoping for an uneventful long weekend to overcome her jetlag.

Instead, rain fell, the city flooded, and she found herself in Helensville, watching Brown coin the phrase “widespread misunderterpretation” and losing his rag.

Simpson says what happened is that unlike prime minister Chris Hipkins, who turned up with a speech to read, Brown was responding on the fly.

“I’ve seen him do this before. He tries to explain what happened and he just cannot articulate that. He gets upset when the media don’t seem to understand what he’s trying to say.”

Simpson realised that “it wasn’t getting any better, so it was just like – get outta here!”

Has she ever had to drag a speaker off a stage like that before?

“No.”

Did she realise in the moment it might become a meme?

“No.” She laughs loudly. “No, I didn’t.”

Desley Simpson (in green) and Wayne Brown (right) listen as fire and emergency manager Ron Devlin takes media questions about the Auckland floods. (Photo: Bruce Mackay/Stuff)

Given the praise heaped on Simpson for her subsequent performance as the public face of the floods, is Simpson going to run for mayor herself?

“I think my answer at the moment is one never says never. At the moment I am more than challenged being deputy mayor.”

OK. But what if you were running for mayor. What would your policies be?

“Oh stone the crows! I haven’t even been in the job six months. Can we get through at least a year of this term?”

OK. Let’s ask again in October.

Simpson has to be at the Town Hall at 2pm, so we race through some quickfire questions. Favourite travel destination: Italy. Favourite spot in Auckland: The Domain. Thing you love most about Auckland: “He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.”

Thing that upsets you most about Auckland?

“Congestion, maybe? … Actually nothing really upsets me. It can be frustrating that it could be better, but I’m never upset by Auckland. I love it. It’s like a child, you know? Your children can do things that annoy you, but you love them regardless.”

There’s one more thing I want to ask.

At least four times today, Simpson has said people shouldn’t “judge a book by its cover”. She first said it when asked to pose by her Porsche, so it’s probably connected to that, and maybe the pink Karl Lagerfeld dress she’s wearing. But I want to be clear: what precisely is the “cover” Simpson reckons people are misjudging? And what’s the book inside that they should be noticing instead?

She responds with a question of her own.

“Why haven’t I stood for mayor? [Because] I never thought anyone would vote for someone who looks like me. And I’m not going to change the way I am or who I am.

“Yet I have seen white man after white man after white man put their hand up. And it doesn’t seem to matter for a man, but as a woman, you can be judged by what you wear, what your hair looks like. Phil Goff I think lived in a grey suit, you know? But I’m me. I love nice things. I love colour. I can afford that and I like to wear it – it’s a reflection of my personality.

“But it’s tough out there for some of Auckland. And I do my utmost best to understand what it’s like to be in areas outside of my own.”

That’s why, long before politics, she worked on those programmes for school kids. She really believes people can be whatever they want to be, regardless of background. That’s partly why she’s been reticent today about her own background.

“Because it shouldn’t matter whether you were privileged or not. We have a city that no matter where you live, we have a wonderful education system – even though it’s got a whole lot of problems. You can be whatever you like. You can go to university. You can deliver on your dream.”

Her voice cracks.

“I am so passionate about this city.”

She fully tears up, then takes a long breath.

“I know that people like you look at me and you think well, she does this, and she drives that. She can’t possibly be something else. And you couldn’t be more wrong. And I’m sorry you’ve left it to the last five minutes to cover that.”

She laughs at her tears.

“Woah! Glass of water please!”

She continues: “But I work as hard as the hardest-working person in this building. I just have this vision for Auckland where everybody can thrive.”

The water arrives, and some tissues. Simpson sips, and dabs.

“God. That’s so unusual for me. But this is my passion. Forget what I did when I was 5 or whatever. Doesn’t matter.”

Her next appointment is in seven minutes. She gathers her stuff and strides for the lift, apologising as she goes, perhaps for the hurried conclusion; perhaps for the surprise tears.

I’m slower to move and by the time my lift reaches the ground floor she’s already halfway across the street. There she is: the deputy mayor you’ll never see in a grey suit, walking very fast toward the Town Hall.

Politics